5 Common Habits Sabotaging Your Nervous System

If there’s anything that can force us to wake up to what really matters in life, it’s the brutality of contrast. I had rude wakeup call after travelling the world and realizing the lifestyle of Western society is simply one more iteration of the human experience.

It’s not the “optimal” or “most advanced,” no matter what American exceptionalism would have us think. You only need to look at how 26% of the population has a diagnosed mental illness to see that something’s gone very wrong.

Despite how technologically dependent we are, we’re biological organisms at the end of the day. Being fragile as such, we must ask ourselves: are the tendencies we’ve built truly helping our nervous systems thrive at the highest level?

It turns out, they’re not. What they’re setting us up for instead is brain toxicity, chronic inflammation, premature aging, and stress overload, which is all the more tragic considering it would just take some basic changes to reverse it.

Not Valuing Sleep

A third of America sleeps less than seven hours a night. This impacts the brain’s chance to rest deeply enough in its natural sleep cycles.

During deep sleep, the brain purifies itself of toxins by flooding them with cerebro-spinal fluid. If the toxins build up over time, the brain damage that follows causes cognitive decline when you get older.

Thankfully, the simple act of aerobic exercise can be as effective as sleeping pills for helping cure insomnia and accessing the sleep levels your body needs.

Overloading Your Digestive System

Overeating has been found to cause inflammation that leads to brain damage, and it inhibits the very same hormone that tells you when your stomach has had enough.

In Japan, it’s customary to eat to 80% capacity, and in yogic lifestyles, a quarter of the stomach is recommended to be left empty at meals.

Over time, overloading the digestive system can cause memory loss. Yet the opposite of this (fasting) can improve cognition and stall neurodegeneration.

Impairing Your Hearing

There’s a disturbing correlation between hearing loss and dementia.

When your hearing capacity is reduced, it impacts the gray matter of the brain associated with analyzing complex sentences. The two are intimately linked; the incredible studies done on this show that having impaired auditory function actually speeds up cognitive decline.

The most common cause of hearing loss in your control to prevent is reducing loud noise intake. Use headphones instead of earbuds, and limit listening to up to an hour at a time so you don’t desensitize your auditory system.

Salt Intake

Sugar usually takes the cake when it comes to being blamed for health problems.

Yet scientists say that too much salt is just as dramatic because of the inhibition pathways that reduce blood flow into the brain. This naturally leads to dementia, although the whole risk can be prevented by eating fewer processed foods.

Online Overstimulation

You might think that doomscrolling and Youtube binges are harmless coping mechanisms. They might be — only if your nervous system isn’t already burdened with stress.

A study conducted on sympathetic nervous system overactivity found that it was accompanied by chronic anxiety along with a whole host of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

It might seem fine to use triggering technology so much simply because it’s become part of the fabric of our social reality. But if it’s consistently activating your fight or flight stress responses, you need a time out.

The Takeaway: An Invisible Spectrum

Obviously, most of us aren’t sleep deprived, salt-eating, headphone-wearing overeaters who’re addicted to the internet.

The point is that the things we do condition our neurological infrastructure; which in turns limits what we’re capable of.

Children are being diagnosed with ADHD due to exposure to media that’s literally overloading their nervous systems. Are they going to grow up to become the Mozarts and Carnegies of the future? Definitely not.

The human nervous system’s functioning is not a spectrum that begins at ‘asylum inmate’ and ends at ‘regular person.’ We may see it as such only because we haven’t been exposed to anyone beyond that range.

The truth is that the highest peak of nervous system well-being is beyond anything we can imagine with preconceived ideas.

We have to endeavor to become the healthiest and wisest versions of ourselves in order to even know that such a thing as freedom from mental affliction is possible, let alone putting it within reach.

So take some time to reflect on how your nerves and cognitive capacity might not be getting the treatment it deserves. Your physical nervous infrastructure is supposed to be the reliable support for more ‘invisible’ efforts towards mental well-being, such as meditation.

At the very least, your older self will thank you graciously for it.